Eratosthenes first measured the circumference of the earth from the shadows cast by the sun. Today, humanity's fitness to survive will be measured by our ability to conquer that same thermonuclear fusion that casts those shadows. Thus, Prometheus will truly be unbound.

"The mind is a compact, multiply connected thought mass with internal connections of the most intimate kind. It grows continuously as new thought masses enter it, and this is the means by which it continues to develop."

Bernhard Riemann On Psychology and Metaphysics ca. 1860

Today's Elites

Friday, January 18, 2013

Dreams, Checks on Conscience, "Crowdsourcing"

What might seem like a mishmash of impressions has struck me just now that I think might perhaps be useful to an admittedly, shall we say, narrow audience of mine (whether internal or otherwise.)

First, earlier I had a dream which I awoke from an early evening nap. Usually, the story lines of such dreams are merely discarded as inconsequential and so instantly dissolved into the subconscious abyss. But as this one seemed to illustrate a kind of principle of dreaming, I kept it in memory:

My mother wrote a check that she gave me to take to her bank and deposit in her account. It was unstated yet understood that this was to be kept secret, for some unspoken reason, from my father. The check was for $950,000. At the same time, I was to get her some highly desirable ice cream she wanted called "futon." I went to the bank, presented the check and successfully deposited it. Now, I am a little hazy whether that same bank was also the venue for the ice cream counter. But, at any rate, the "futon" ice cream that I sought was slushy and melting and the server directed me to another venue to get some scoops that were frozen. I remember walking to another counter perhaps outside the building and getting two different scoops of this variety of ice cream. Then I awoke.

Now none of this foregoing is embellished in any way. Why I think this might be interesting, is that a principle of mind could be sought here. I had read recently several chapters of Cotton Mather's history of the biographies of the early deans of Harvard (who were at one and the same time pastors for their students.) One thing that stood out was his insistence on highlighting and praising their rather agonizing diaries of humility, doubt, and self effacing/mortification as being unfit to serve as role models for the faithful. I must admit that I had never quite run across such public and fulsome praise of this quality of conscience. It brought me back to my own childhood experience with religion in America. The church at the end of the street was a Methodist one, which I attended very seldomly. But I distinctly remember a very strong feeling of religious rejection especially in dreams at that young age. The image of God as an old man shaking his head in rejection at me has still stuck with me viscerally. But this is precisely the sort of primitive "agenbite of inwit" that Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana" reignited in me.

Now the reason I have brought these two preceding seemingly disparate reflections together is to illustrate a function of mind which I believe is universal. Much palaver is wasted these days by academics in search of a metric for intelligence. Usually the bawdlerized version that is popular (of which the significance of, I will go into later) would be to treat of intelligence as analogous to a test of strength of the faculty of memory or perhaps the inventiveness (quirkiness ?) of imagination. But almost nothing is noted of a remarkable evidence of what I consider to be the actual mark of "genius." That is simply an unerring ability to direct or self-edit the flow of thought along a course consonant with a "humanist" philosophical standpoint.

This is in total contradistinction to the asinine heralded opinion floating around in "cyberspace" of the much touted "wisdom of crowds." So, for instance, when Leibniz writes that he must reject out of hand any physics (in particular DesCartes' version) that stipulates the violation of the efficacy of the ontological or final cause as the principle of least action performing the most potential good-- this is precisely such an instance of the faculty of genius. And this has nothing to do with any miraculous quality of performance and functioning of the physical synapses in the human brain. It is entirely another, higher function of mind. This proceeds from what Cusa terms "filiation" with the Creator, or what I would restate as love of communing with the ongoing process of continuing perfection of universal creation. It is the attempt to bring to bear a principle in human government to allow the orchestration of beneficence for their future well being. Which is to say the complete and utter opposite of the oligarchy's ruse of the bloody shirt of "democratic rule."

Above: Osrakons used to democratically banish the enemies of the oligarchy.

A NIGHT-PIECE ON DEATH

By the blue taper's trembling light,

No more I waste the wakeful night,Intent with endless view to poreThe schoolmen and the sages o'er:Their books from wisdom widely stray,Or point at best the longest way.I'll seek a readier path, and goWhere wisdom's surely taught below.

How deep yon azure dyes the sky,Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie,While through their ranks in silver prideThe nether crescent seems to glide!The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,The lake is smooth and clear beneath,Where once again the spangled showDescends to meet our eyes below.The grounds which on the right aspire,In dimness from the view retire:The left presents a place of graves,Whose wall the silent water laves.That steeple guides thy doubtful sight,Among the livid gleams of night.There pass, with melancholy state,By all the solemn heaps of fate,And think, as softly-sad you treadAbove the venerable dead,'Time was, like thee they life possess'd,And time shall be, that thou shalt rest.'

Those graves, with bending osier bound,That nameless heave the crumbled ground,Quick to the glancing thought discloseWhere Toil and Poverty repose.

The flat smooth stones that bear a name,The chisel's slender help to fame,Which, e'er our set of friends decay,Their frequent steps may wear away,A middle race of mortals own,Men half-ambitious, all unknown.

The marble tombs that rise on high,Whose dead in vaulted arches lie,Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones,Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones;--These (all the poor remains of state)Adorn the rich, or praise the great;Who while on earth in fame they live,Are senseless of the fame they give.

Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,The bursting earth unveils the shades!All slow, and wan, and wrapp'd with shrouds,They rise in visionary crowds,And all with sober accent cry,'Think, mortal, what it is to die!'

Now from yon black and funeral yew,That bathes the charnal-house with dew,Methinks I hear a voice begin;(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din,Ye tolling clocks, no time resoundO'er the long lake and midnight ground!)It sends a peal of hollow groans,Thus speaking from among the bones:

'When men my scythe and darts supply,How great a king of fears am I!They view me like the last of things:They make, and then they dread, my stings.Fools! if you less provoked your fears,No more my spectre-form appears.Death's but a path that must be trod,If man would ever pass to God:A port of calms, a state of easeFrom the rough rage of swelling seas.

Nor can the parted body know,Nor wants the soul these forms of woe:As men who long in prison dwell,With lamps that glimmer round the cell,Whene'er their suffering years are run,Spring forth to greet the glittering sun:Such joy, though far transcending sense,Have pious souls at parting hence.On earth, and in the body placed,A few, and evil years, they waste:But when their chains are cast aside,See the glad scene unfolding wide,Clap the glad wing and tower away,And mingle with the blaze of day!'

Thomas Parnell

For Annie

Thank Heaven! the crisis-The danger is past,And the lingering illnessIs over at last-And the fever called "Living"Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I knowI am shorn of my strength,And no muscle I moveAs I lie at full length-But no matter!-I feelI am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,Now, in my bedThat any beholderMight fancy me dead-Might start at beholding me,Thinking me dead.

For now, while so quietlyLying, it fanciesA holier odorAbout it, of pansies-A rosemary odor,Commingled with pansies-With rue and the beautifulPuritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,Bathing in manyA dream of the truthAnd the beauty of Annie-Drowned in a bathOf the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,She fondly caressed,And then I fell gentlyTo sleep on her breast-Deeply to sleepFrom the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,She covered me warm,And she prayed to the angelsTo keep me from harm-To the queen of the angelsTo shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,Now, in my bed,(Knowing her love)That you fancy me dead-And I rest so contentedly,Now, in my bed,(With her love at my breast)That you fancy me dead-That you shudder to look at me,Thinking me dead.

But my heart it is brighterThan all of the manyStars in the sky,For it sparkles with Annie-It glows with the lightOf the love of my Annie-With the thought of the lightOf the eyes of my Annie.

Edgar Allan Poe

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.

The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathises with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it.